The Confederation of Australian Motor Sport, who run the Australian Grand Prix, has sent a team of marshals to Korea to help support and train the 700 Korean marshals in preparation for their inaugural Grand Prix this weekend.

Among them is F1 Fanatic reader and experienced marshal John Booker. Here’s his view of the state of the track and facilities:

The circuit itself is ready for Friday morning’s first session. However, the circuit site itself is very much under construction and will remain that way for the event. But it won’t interfere with the race, just look rather unglamorous on the TV.

There are supposed to be lakes inside the circuit (between turns three and eight) as well as the marina around the final section which are very much just dirt pits at the moment. Word is that they wont be completed until next year.

Their plan for the circuit is very ambitious with the positive effect of giving the Korean’s facilities that can be used for many purposes all through out the year, including a permanent race track. Much better than some of the other new circuits which are only used once a year for the same cost.

The teams’ cargo pods arrived yesterday and all the teams bar two were in the process of getting their garages set-up. HRT hadn’t even opened a single pod while Ferrari were completely set up with both cars in the garage and everyone there is sitting around waiting for Thursday.

Today is our rest day while the circuit contractors make all the minor changes to the track we requested after yesterdays inspection and we will be back at the track tomorrow (Wednesday) for another inspection. Most of the issues are purely line of sight issues between posts due to advertising signs (a problem which also occurs at Albert Park).

Thursday will be the FIA speed test where they run the safety car around to test timing lines and we use it as another full circuit test for all marshals.

There is only one support category which is the Hyundai Genesis Series, which is a touring car series run in South Korea. They will have one practise session on Friday, one qualifying session on Saturday and one race on Sunday.John Booker

Neither John nor the race organisers confirmed reports that cement dust was being used at the track to absorb surface oils from the recently-laid tarmac.

I always have the utmost respect for guys like you John, hope you get to enjoy the race in between doing your duties!

I’ll say one thing for Korea, at least they got their priorities right and ave the track completed. In Britain anything unfinished would probably have half the track done and half the buildings completed.

or 6 months after Bernie actually gave them a long enough contract for the race to seek the investment that they needed in order to finance the improvements…..

Prior to that Bernie had been constantly muttering that he wanted rid of Silverstone (well the BRDC), and that the government should foot the bill and all sorts of other crack pot ideas that made it next to impossible for Silverstone to raise the money….

I can’t believe they didn’t even manage to complete the Marina at the final corner*, curving the track around a big empty sandpit is going to look ridiculous on TV. Expect creative camera angles to try and cover up the problems, the kind we see at Istanbul

* Although saying as fans have been complaining that every new circuit has a marina, perhaps this is an example of the race organiser taking heed of our complaints!

I am not liking the sound of this. I am a proud fan of Formula 1, and when I turn the TV on and see terrible coverage it gets me so angry, as I find it embarrassing and doing a great injustice to the sport I love. But if there isn’t at the very least some grass around the outside of the circuit (to give us the illusion that it has been completed) I am going to be very disappointed. I hate looking back on this sort of stuff in 5-10 years time and remembering how amateur it all was.

Please Korea, for the sake of Formula 1’s image, deliver us a Grand Prix that is at least as aesthetically pleasing as Turkey…

Did you see the article link Keith put up about building an F1 Themed city near the track?
Does anyone here have a clue?
This is about as far south as you can go in Korea. It’s never going to be a big attraction to anyone because if they are going south, they just continue on to Jeju Island.
I guess we will be able to add this city to the six EMPTY international airports that they’ve built on the “build it and they will come” basis. These airports are totally empty, and have no flights at all..

I suppose they might have wanted built another airport to go with the track here ;-)

Bernie can use up to 2 of these airports (Muan and Gwangju) to give them the traffic of a lifetime when his 6 pieces of 474 jets land to ship all F1 freight into the region and out again. And they will have a load of traffic from private airplanes and helicopters to ship the VIPs.

So, what, the promotional brochures will be 20 years behind the times, it’ll be run with an iron fist by a man 40 years past his prime, he’ll get half of everyone’s rent even though he doesn’t actually do anything and already sold his shares, everyone will have to live in identical houses, and anyone who does home improvement work will be told to take it down two weeks later?

I’ve driven this circuit in rFactor and I have to say the layout is truly awful – I would say it is probably Tilkes worst track so far.

There are far too many fiddly first gear corners, and the few ‘fast’ corners that there are seem to be an after thought, there is nothing special at all. The first five corners of the lap are all super tight first gear corners – that is pretty shocking design in my opinion.

The track also seems to be very flat with only minor elevation changes.

Sepang is easily Tilkes best circuit design. Unfortunately it seems to have been downhill ever since, with Korea being the all time low.

I don’t think you should use an rFactor track to test the layout. As far as I know the game track is awful, but I wouldn’t say that about the real life track yet. The modders wouldn’t have had height data either, so it would be hard to get an accurate track if the real one wasn’t even finished at the time it was released.